Blackwater demagoguery

Blackwater, the security firm that protects U.S. civilians in Iraq, is under almost daily fire from the Democrats/MSM and their unlikely ally in this enterprise, the Maliki government in Iraq. I don’t have enough information to opine on the underlying issues, but whatever the merits, the opportunities for demagoguery seem endless.
Most discussions of demagoguery should begin with John Edwards, and this one is no exception. As Ben Smith reports in The Politico, Edwards has seized on the Blackwater story as a means of attacking Hillary Clinton. It seems that Clinton’s chief political strategist Mark Penn is a member of the public relations firm that helped prepare Blackwater’s CEO for his testimony before Congress. Here’s what Edwards, ever the glib opportunist, had to say about this:

Bush has been a perfect example of cronyism, because Blackwater has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and to President Bush. I also saw this morning that Sen. Clinton